My vision took a second to return, and I found myself looking at my parents' wedding photos hanging in the hallway leading to the kitchen. I started for a few seconds before I felt much of the manic tension fade from my body. I actually collapsed to the floor right there, and tears covered my face even while my mind went blank and I felt nothing inside.
It's amazing how wilfully ignorant a person can be when confronted with something far outside their normal experience. Perhaps I'm being too hard on my younger self; she certainly had no reason to suspect the experience she had just had might be repeated, given that it was wholly outside the scientific realm in which she had lived to that point. Perhaps I could have saved myself some pain in the future had I started planning then, but it wasn't to be.
At some point between taking a two hour shower and eating three meals worth of lasagne, I discovered that it was Sunday afternoon, exactly two days since I last remembered being at home, and matching exactly to the two days I had spent in a living horror. Only the rough jacket and daggers that were hidden in my room hinted that I might not have hallucinated the entire thing.
Needless to say, my plans prior to the event had been drastically changed. I had hoped to spend the summer looking for work, possibly visiting a few of my friends from home, and simply relaxing before plunging into the remainder of my working life. Instead I spent too many sleepless nights looking up self defense tips and laws for weapons, telling myself I wouldn't be a victim again. I suspect my parents noticed something, but in the end they never said anything and I was left to question my sanity on my own.
In later jumps I would come to value the time I got to spend away from the hell hole that was feudal times, but in the end the only preparation I made during the entire 18 days I spent at home was a small container of pepper spray that I started carrying around with me. Grand plans of training in self defence, or getting a gun, simply fell by the wayside. And so once again, at 3:18 pm, I found myself once again getting light headed and entering a living nightmare.
I recognized the forest around me all too vividly, the memory of it burned into my mind from the humiliating experience that had followed seeing it the first time. At least this time I was dressed in a nice set of jeans and t-shirt, though that ended up getting me in more trouble than the nightgown in the end. I probably wasted a few hours in a state of shock and denial, but somewhere in the fear I realised the men from the longboats might be back, and it spurred me into action. I carefully picked a direction I would be able to follow again if and when this occurred again, and set out in search of a place to safely spend the next two days.
The sun continued to rise in the sky over the next hour or so, convincing me that though the time differed, it flowed no differently here than at home. As I walked, I tried to picture where on the globe this all might be, but even with my somewhat flawed American geography education I knew there was no place on earth that would fit the bill. I found a few promising groves of trees, but nothing that would fully protect me from the elements. I had little in terms of bedding, and the idea of spending two days sleeping under a tree didn't appeal to me. And so it was with surprise when I found the trees thinning and myself looking out over a large hill into the sloping land around me.
There were mountains visible to the right, though they paled in comparison to most of the Rocky Mountains I had spent my vacations exploring. The ocean sat to the left, and I was stunned by how much it all reminded me of home. It could have been any number of places on the west coast, excepting one glaring flaw.
In front of me sat a city that gleamed gold in the overhead sun. It was obviously just as medieval as the rest of this place, with no buildings over three stories baring a few glaring examples made of stone which appeared to be mostly religious in nature based on their ornate structures.
I watched the city for a while, considering the danger of approaching closer. On the one hand, I was positive I couldn't speak the language, and my appearance would draw more than one strange look. On the other hand, I would almost certainly be back here in the future, and it would be exceedingly useful to find out as much as possible about what I might need to make those trips as easy as possible. In the end I decided to take the risk. Even if I was arrested for some unknown crime, I would almost certainly be ferried back to my own world before any serious harm could come about. I laughed to myself at the insanity of my reliance on an occurrence which defied all reason and logic, and yet the idea calmed me greatly.
The city seemed large enough that a stranger would be no rare sight for most, and perhaps getting local clothes and currency would extend my future prospects. It took another hour to approach the city, the small path merging with a major road about ten minutes out. I passed a few people on the way in, and though I certainly got a significant quantity of stares, none moved to stop me or even interrupt me. The city guards did halt me at the gates for quite a while and asked some questions, but difficulty understanding them and and my response in a foreign accent seemed to relax them somewhat and they waved me through. Only much later would it hit me how strange it was that these people spoke a language eerily close to English, though mutated as if separated for a few hundred years. Regardless, I could understand them well enough if they spoke slowly, and that sufficed for most interactions in the beginning.
It was both much more and much less than I would have expected from a medieval city. It was certainly dirty, and yet there were none of the stereotypical horrors one hears about in tales about open sewers and terrible stench. I did get wafts of the occasional unwashed person, but more often than not I smelt the aroma of cooking food or the sting of a salty ocean breeze. It also had quite a few houses that appeared damaged by fire and a few that had burned down completely. Soldiers patrolled the streets, and I suspected that much of this was related to the men I had met on my first visit. Near the entrance to the city was a market of sorts, and though I was loath to part with anything, I managed to get what I thought was a fair deal on a few outfits of clothing I had seen other women wearing. Obviously the few bills I had on me were useless, but when I pulled out the couple dollars I had in change, I got some interest. Evidently the fine minting of the coins gave them some worth even if they clearly had never seen their like before. Indeed, I almost felt like I was cheating them when I walked away with two full outfits for two quarters. No doubt the seller thought the same as me. I even got a set of the undergarments on display, but I vowed to avoid them if at all possible as they appeared to chafe horribly and didn't provide the level of support I had come to expect in clothing.
I found my way to an inn, identified by a large sign with a stylized bed, and got across my need of a room for the next two nights. Here I parted with another fifty cents, though I noticed he seemed much less inclined to take the foreign coins, so I sweetened the deal with a pack of matches I had taken from the last hotel I stayed at. Demonstrating one was enough for him to jump at the package. The rest of the night was easy enough. I managed to doze for a few hours before I spent a few hours in the small tavern attached to the inn. I had changed into less conspicuous clothing, and I enjoyed myself with the unexpectedly entertaining situation I was in. More than one person broke into song and dance, and it seemed a lively place.
It was here where I first met the most important person in my life for the next year, though at the time he was little more than a novelty. At first he appeared to be a larger child accompanied by his young mother, but a second look drastically changed this conclusion. He was certainly under 4 feet tall, but his pimpled, rough face spoke of a boy in the midst of puberty. His looks did give me a second's pause, and I felt uncomfortable both at his appearance, and at how he must suffer for it in such a world. He had a girl slightly older than myself with him, who was hanging off of him and wearing a quite revealing outfit even for my modern standards. She certainly seemed willing to be there, but her looks of faint disgust when he left to get drinks led me to believe she was interested more in his money than anything else.
And money he certainly had, if his clothing was any indication. I found myself simply listening to those around me, trying to pick out the meaning in their maddening accent that sounded so close to my mother tongue, and yet so incomprehensible when shouted over a dozen other voices. The boy had left with his companion and returned some time later alone, and I stared at him, finding it difficult to imagine a world where an underage boy could publicly hire a prostitute while drinking heavily at a bar. He caught me staring, and despite quickly averting my gaze he came up and started speaking to me.
"I'm sorry, I missed your meaning. I'm not from around here."
His grin only grew, and he seated himself at my small table, his height seeming more normal once hidden behind the wooden surface.
"I'm Tyrion Lannister" he pronounced clearly and slowly, introducing himself. I replied in kind, finding the outspoken boy somewhat endearing even with the obvious vices he had.
We spent a few hours there, with him leading the conversation more often than not. It seemed a fun challenge for him to find out who I was, though I carefully dodged most of his questions. He did end up teaching me quite a few unfamiliar words, mostly slang terms that were easy enough to pick up even if they butchered every rule I'd ever been taught about sentence structure. Though the food was subpar and the drink was awful, I went to bed that night with a smile on my face, and much more hope for the future. I almost imagined it might be fun to escape into my own little world every once in a while, and certainly there were opportunities galore that I could use to make my mandated journeys a solid use of my time both mentally and financially. Indeed, if a few dollars in change could buy what it had, I only imagined that there was a killing to be made buying and selling various wares, even if limited only to what I could carry. This city was close to where I appeared and friendly enough, not the horrible place my earlier experience had been. Tyrion reminded me of more than one of my friends in their school years, often eager to please and always perking up at the idea of an intellectual challenge.
I treated the next day as a vacation, and dressed in a modest gown as I explored the area with the few coins I had. I did bring the pepper spray bound to my leg below the dress, but any sense of danger I had had over the previous three weeks seemed far away in such an obviously prosperous place. I visited a few of the church-like buildings with their beautiful artwork and statues, though there was a surprising amount of damage, and I visited the docks, where it seemed construction was under way to build huge numbers of ships. The fire that had burnt so many of the buildings seemed to have spread from the docks, with many buildings completely destroyed in the area, but already many were being torn down to rebuild. The town gave off a slight nervous tension, but overall I enjoyed the day.
The night was spent in the same tavern, and I found myself once again in the company of the short excitable boy. Interestingly, he seemed little inclined to attempt to woo me, which was relieving based on his earlier behavior with the prostitute. This time he had brought paper and a map, and seemed insistent that I show him where I was from. I learned from him that we were in Lannisport, and that he was from nearby, and if I was correct, the son of a local lord. I learned a great deal about the place in those few hours, but he was unconvinced when I pointed out as my home a random town far from where we were. Still, he was friendly enough, and when I left to sleep I vowed to make the effort to find him again in some future visit. I carefully gathered all my belongings and my new purchases, and sat myself on the bed in the inn, eagerly awaiting my return home.
I would be waiting a while longer.